Edwin A. Abbott was born December 20, 1838. He attended City of London School and Cambridge, where he was an honor student in the classics. Following the career path of his father, Abbott was ordained an Anglican minister. Later he rejected a career as a clergyman and at the age of twenty-six, he returned to City of London School as Headmaster, a position he held for twenty-five years. Always curious about views from varying perspectives, he promoted a liberal attitude toward people of differing backgrounds. As president of the Teachers Training Society, for example, he lobbied for access to university education for women. He resigned as Headmaster at age fifty-three in protest of proposed… changes to the mission of the school. Abbott wrote more than fifty books on widely different topics. He had published two series of his sermons while at Cambridge, a book on Shakespearean grammar, and accounts of his efforts to admit women to higher education. His most notable work is Flatland, written in 1884. Flatland is still widely read by both mathematicians and science-fiction readers because of its portrayal of the idea of higher dimensions. The narrator, a two-dimensional square called A Square happens into a three-dimensional world where he gains a wider vision into objects in his two-dimensional home. The book was a favorite with C. S. Lewis. Abbott died on October 12, 1926.
K. C. Hanson is the author of more than three dozen books, articles, papers, and reviews on religious themes. Previously an assistant professor of religion at California State University at Long Beach and The Episcopal Theological School at Claremont, Hanson's book credits include Proclamation 6: Pentecost 1. Aids for Interpreting the Lessons of the Church Year; Proclamation 4: Pentecost 3. Aids for Interpreting the Lessons of the Church Year; and Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Domains and Social Conflicts. The latter was written with Douglas E. Oakman. Hanson has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biblical Studies from Pacific Christian College. He earned his Master's and Ph.D. in… Religion from Claremont Graduate School in 1984. A member of the Catholic Biblical Association, The American Academy of Religion, and the Society of Biblical Literature, Hanson has been an Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. since 1994.